Tarlton takes his place in theatrical history as creator of the stage yokel; his performance in this role is thought to have influenced Shakespeare’s creation of the character Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Tarlton himself is said to have been the model for the court jester Yorick described in Hamlet. Tarlton’s popularity and genius were undisputed. Thomas Nashe wrote that audiences began “exceedingly to laugh when he first peept out his head”; Edmund Spenser mourned him as “our pleasant Willy . . . with whom all joy and jolly merriment/Is also deaded”; and in 1643 Sir Richard Baker said that “for the . . . Clown’s part he never had his match, never will have.” Few of his actual roles as a comedian are known, however. Contemporary sketches show Tarlton in country homespun, holding a pipe and tabor and standing on one toe.

Tarlton is first mentioned in 1570 for his didactic ballad on the “late great floods.” The Stationers’ Register of 1576 credits him with “a newe booke in Englishe verse intituled Tarltons Toyes.” By 1579 he was a well-known actor and Queen Elizabeth I’s favourite jester, the only one able to “undumpish” her when she was out of humour and the only one allowed to tell her of her faults. In 1583 he became a leading comic actor of the Queen’s Men and groom of Her Majesty’s chamber. His plays, which were praised by contemporaries, are all lost. Of later jestbooks that were published as Tarlton’s, such as Tarltons Newes out of Purgatorie (c. 1590) and Tarlton’s Jests (1611), most are of dubious authenticity, but, like inn signboards that depicted him as late as 1798, they attest to the endurance of his fame.